BREAKING NEWS: DATA IS MORE ACCURATE THAN MAKING SHIT UP

It's not pleasant to watch amateurs try their hand at your profession. If you're a doctor or nurse it must be difficult to watch "medical dramas" like E.R. because, well, you'd be distracted constantly by how ridiculous and inaccurate it is. The phrase "That's not how it really works!" would be at the tip of your tongue throughout. Ditto for lawyers watching procedural crime dramas, and so on.
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Sure, you can accept that fiction involves a good deal of artistic license but you also want everyone to know that, no, doctors don't really do things like House does.

The last six months have been excruciating for me at times because during elections a lot of people talk about polling.

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There are not many things I know well enough to approach the level of "expert", but public opinion data and its collection is one.
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A few people understand it vaguely and have some combination of knowledge and folk wisdom. Most people, to put it mildly, do not know the theory and methods of polling from their ass from a hole in the ground.

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The great thing about politics, though, is that everyone's an expert. Aided by college dropouts with AM Radio talk shows and ineptly designed websites, it turns out that people are more than willing to lecture us on how polling really works. I am so grateful to all the people who have tried to explain it to me this year.

And so we had a campaign season full of gems like "Unskewed Polls" that corrected an imaginary flaw in polling methodology, producing some outstanding predictions in the process.

People who could not explain the concepts of random sampling, weighting, or confidence intervals to save their souls were eagerly spreading the news that they had figured out how the Liberal Media was rigging the system to hide the latent popularity of one Willard Romney. They're stuffing the samples with Democrats to prop up the Usurper! Spread the news!

I certainly understood this narrative; when losing an election, campaigns must do something to keep the base fired up, to convince them that the odds of success are higher than they are. I get it. You don't want people to give up. "We think the election is closer than the polls indicate" is not an uncommon or inappropriate sentiment in elections. However, on Tuesday evening it became clear that this was something else. Rather than a white lie one tells to keep up appearances, the idea that all of the polls (except, curiously, Rasmussen's dreck showing Romney in the lead) are wrong is something these people internalized. They made the timeless error of believing their own bullshit.

Because the originators of the Skewed Theory were careful to decorate it with all the trappings of pseudoscience and half-assed logic, many Republicans appear to have believed it. It is precisely the kind of thing that stupid people think sounds really intelligent. This is why we saw so many Republicans crushed – positively despondent, even – on Tuesday evening in an election that every available data point predicted would unfold exactly as it did. To see the stunned, shocked, and horrified looks on the faces of the Fox News on-air personalities was legitimately surprising to me. Did all of these people, some of whom are quite highly educated, honestly believe this ludicrous ration of shit they were serving these viewers? Did they really not know that Romney was going to lose?

I am not using hyperbole here. Taking the median of the aggregated statewide polls correctly predicted the presidential election outcome in 50 out of 50 states. Not 45. Not 49. Fifty. It also nailed 31 of the 32 Senate races. The right's new favorite target for their adolescent bullying, Nate Silver, basically got every last goddamn thing about this election right.

Watching Karl Rove's complete meltdown on Fox, during which even the other Fox people openly told him he was insane and suggested (seriously) that he get psychological help, highlights the key to understanding all of this: the complete inability of Republicans and conservatives in general to accept reality. Namely the reality that A) lots of people like Barack Obama, B) most of us do not see the world as Republicans see it, and C) Obama could actually, legitimately be the President of the United States. It simply can't be true. There must be some explanation (Occam's Razor be damned) that explains it. And they will keep searching until they find it.

Republicans who were stunned on Tuesday were stunned for only one reason: they refused to believe the facts right in front of them and instead chose to believe a bunch of nonsense they made up to suit their ideological preferences. We are now on a string of five elections – 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012 – that were predicted with almost pinpoint accuracy by pre-election polling. Polling is accurate. In fact it is getting almost creepily accurate. The people who conduct polls know what they're doing, and the people who interpret them do not need the insight and wisdom of Karl Rove or "QStarNews". We will go through this song and dance again in 2016, when everyone will have forgotten that the polls weren't so Skewed after all and the same nonsense will be trotted out in service of the next Republican who isn't performing as well in reality as he is in the imaginations of his supporters.

67 thoughts on “BREAKING NEWS: DATA IS MORE ACCURATE THAN MAKING SHIT UP”

  • "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." – Kurt Vonnegut.

    Sadly, the reaction for 2016 will be a whole raft of new, red-tinted polling organizations who will flood the zone with bullshit polls in an effort to skew the narrative. Like two dozen Rasmussens coming out of the woodwork and trying to poison Nate Silver's inputs. The bullshit never ends.

    One nice side effect of last night was that we can now in good conscience throw out polls by blatantly right-leaning garbage pollster like and the former gold standard Gallup when we do projections for future elections.

  • Nate Silver hasn't been alone in taking shit, Paul Krugman is the poster child for numbers-savvy recipient of right wing rage. And I think his blog post today is correct as to the reason why:

    "…what we’ve just seen is a peek into the modern right-wing psyche, which is obsessed — more than anything else — with power. Policy is one thing; but equally or even more important is the sense of being with the winners, of being part of the team that will stamp its boots on the faces of the other guys. And while conservatives of that ilk would probably concede if pressed on it that there’s a difference between the perception of being on top and the reality determined in an election, emotionally they can’t separate the two: they perceive anyone suggesting that maybe they aren’t going to smash their opponents as a threat."

    Pathetic, really. To be so totally lacking in anything that might generate self-esteem – attractive appearance, athletic ability, education, intelligence, talent, being good at your job, being generous and kind, having a sense of humor – that you have to resort to merely being the water boy for a team, whether it be a religion or a political party [or both]. Humiliation Hell?

  • There's a fundamentally Soviet brand of thought at work here: If the politics are right, then any 'facts' that contradict the ideology must be wrong, regardless of how consistently the numbers add up, how predictably the experiments yield identical results, how often the 'political appropriate' designs crash and burn. The Party has said it is so, and it must be so–only we poor limited individuals lack the vision to see the larger truth that confirms that the Party is always right. Which is how collectivization murdered millions who, according to the figures, were doing just fine.

    I'm not being flip about this comparison–the blind devotion to ideology above objective fact is the hallmark of the passionate activist, or the apparatchik, and the GOP has plenty of both. They have a series of beliefs (supply-side economics, abstinence-only education, etc.) that simply do not hold up to any kind of objective scrutiny. But like all fanatics, they will not admit that the scrutiny is objective–like all fanatics, they actually think of *themselves* as the objective ones. And it's hilarious and sad to contemplate that these people–these old, white warriors of the Cold War era–have become the very thing they fought against for so long: the Party.

    Obligatory caveat: As always, I'm not saying the Democrats are any better. We're plenty fucked up–in particular, we can't sell water to people dying of thirst because our opponents have successfully convinced the dying that thirst is Jesus's way of letting them know how much He loves them. We truly, immeasurably suck balls–in some sense, we're worse, because we actually wish well to those–gays, women, ethnic minorities, the unprotected and victimized–whom Jesus actually went out of his way to spotlight as deserving of our best efforts–but we lack the will and the brains to fight that good fight. I'm offended and angered by the GOP and their delusions, but I'm contemptuous of the Democrats.

    You can't be re-elected, Mr. President. So you've got nothing more to lose. Take off the fucking gloves and fight–make the other side rant and rave and froth, and show themselves for the empty, cruel bullies they are. You may lose, but the first fighter yields a second, and then a third.

    Wishful thinking, I know–but this is a time for such thinking. And besides, look at the GOP–they're already beating us hollow in that particular activity (and he brings it back around to the opening topic–the argumentative triple lutz!–the crowd goes wild…)

  • Middle Seaman says:

    Blaming the right is only part of the story. Listening to mainstream reporters and pundits brings out a reality that doesn't really exist. From claiming that Romney has momentum at the time he started to slide back, through screaming Tuesday night, and even on Wednesday, that the elections are close while they never have been. After all, Obama took al the swing states. The media clearly paint a picture of a Martian world for reasons that have nothing to do with facts.

  • Little anecdote from Down Under here- Obama is well liked overall, and our publicly funded youth radio network Triple J has been gently mocking Americans who have been threatening to move to Australia if Obama won. On the morning show they were pointing out our gun control, public health system, etc to the guys who want to escape "socialist" America!

  • There is probably a more sinister aspect to this kind of thing: All this helps bolster the idiotic claim that Obama somehow managed to get illegal aliens to vote for him. I have heard that in reference to the 2008 election, and I had begun hearing it in the past few months from conservative family members. They will also use the lack of voter ID laws as "proof."

  • Taking the median of the aggregated statewide polls correctly predicted the presidential election outcome in 50 out of 50 states. Not 45. Not 49. Fifty. It also nailed 31 of the 32 Senate races.

    This raises a question — if just taking the median is so accurate, how much value is added by the more complicated statistical models used by the likes of Nate Silver? Maybe not much.

  • To some extent I'm willing to give Republicans a pass on looking so miserable Tuesday night. A lot of Democrats looked the same in 2004 — the polls predicted a narrow loss for Kerry, which is exactly what happened, but they were hoping for some kind of last-minute miracle and didn't get one.

    It's a little like watching your sports team lose narrowly. Sure, you can be sad and pissed off, especially since (unlike sports) politics has a real impact on the quality of people's lives. But a full-blown freakout in which you blame the referee, the commentators, the other team's mascot, anything and everything except the fact that your team wasn't quite good enough… this is not a good thing.

    Even fans of the same team should be quietly backing away from that drunken guy with his face painted in the team colours, as he shrieks incoherently about egregious cheating which was invisible to everyone except himself. Unfortunately, the drunken maniac is now more or less the mainstream of the Republican party.

    Sometimes cheating and/or referee misconduct really does sway the outcome, as in Florida 2000. This is not one of those times. The Republicans lost, and need to get over it.

  • "We think the election is closer than the polls indicate" is not an uncommon or inappropriate sentiment in elections. However, on Tuesday evening it became clear that this was something else.

    Extending the sports metaphor a little further — suppose your NFL team is down by a field goal with 3 minutes left in the 4th quarter. It's the difference between saying "OK, the odds are against, but we can still win this," and "No way can we be behind, the referee should have awarded us that touchdown in the second quarter, and the other team is making our kicker miss by looking at him funny."

  • I think the Fox heads looking sad was intentional- they had to make their viewers feel that they were equally upset. Cognitive dissonance blocks any notion that this may contradict the network's claim to objectivity. Inside, I think they were delighted. Four more years on offense. Obama keeps marching to the right while they keep calling him Communist. This justifies a Republican candidate being even further to the right.

  • @Arslan: They weren't necessarily putting on a show for the cameras. It's entirely possible for a True Believer to be really, genuinely unhappy that his guy lost, and at the same time comforted by the warm glow of ideological purity.

  • c u n d gulag says:

    After all of these years of people assuming that Karl Rove was George W. Bush's brain, it looks more like George W. Bush was Karl Rove's brain.

    That Rove meltdown was one for the ages.

    Hey Conservatives, any drug dealer will tell you that Rule #1 is, "Don't get hooked on what you're dealing."

    I look forward to the continuing Schadenfreude Season, which will only end after the Obama Inaugral Balls.
    The traditional gift to give to Conservatives during Scadenfreude Season, is an extra-large cup of STFU!!!

  • Dude, these are the same people who seriously believe in creationism, they seriously reject the theory of climate change, they seriously believe that one chooses one's sexuality, they seriously bought Todd Akin's bullshit about "legitimate rape" (which Missourians thankfully rejected). They're living in a fantasy world in which they think it's 1950 and the only real people are white dudes who work every day while their white housewives stay home and raise the kids. Everybody else is either subhuman or a lazy moocher. It shouldn't be that surprising to see them so shocked when they find themselves thrust into reality.

  • I think Maddow had the best advice for the GOP: Keep running on the anti-abortion issue, keep alienating women and minorities. In short, stick with the game plan; because eventually the majority will be with you.

    Yes, Rove's meltdown was epic as was Brit Hume's near aneurysm and Krauthammer's babbling while clearly off his meds.

    And just to show that the Villagers haven't learned a fucking thing, Time Editor in Chief Rick Stengel just described President Obama as "slightly chastened" on MJ. Huh?

  • …Most people, to put it mildly, do not know the theory and methods of polling from their ass from a hole in the ground….

    Um, what? What does that mean?

  • Just a note—the polls are certainly "skewed". Whether they have internally consistent bias (Rasmussen) or consistent forms of error (Oh, heck, Rasmussen, again…with their "whoever answers the phone during daytime hours gets polled"), or random error, they are.

    But the best way to correct for that is to make a portfolio of polls, and counter uncorrelated random error, at least.

    (Also—I missed Virginia. How did I miss Virginia? I didn't think the median or mean was reliable, and there seemed to be volatility in individual polls just prior to the election.)

    Hooray for math.
    Down with people justifying their own emotions with false facts.

    (As I mentioned…I won 3 lunches from 3 people, Tuesday. In each case, I offered a "shut-up" wager:
    1) Nate Silver vs. Scott Rasmussen
    2) Right-wing zealot vs. me — I missed VA
    3) "PA is going to Romney" gibberish, which was so ridiculous that even Rasmussen's polling couldn't make it look right. )

  • What particularly struck me was the pre-election week hubris of one Mr Dick Morris.

    He was fairly dismissive of anyone who raised an eyebrow at his megaton level Romney blowout prediction w/ a sniff sniff "I do this for a living (unspoken: Fool!)"

    When confronted post apocalypse, his response was "Well I'm in a very special fraternity – Rove, Carville, blah, blah… We have actually got a President elected, some twice…"

    I would have respected him a lot more if he said:

    "I was quite wrong and I'm going to have to re-evaluate my position as a prognosticator and maybe spend more time writing books with my wife. We especially enjoy producing children's books like my latest…blah, blah."

    "You could say I'm a dreamer…" J Lennon

    //bb

  • Desargues says:

    "Um, what? What does that mean?"

    It's called colorful metaphor. It means that they know nothing about the theory and methods of polling.

    HTH. HAND.

  • "Did all of these people, some of whom are quite highly educated, honestly believe this ludicrous ration of shit they were serving these viewers?"

    Yes. Yes they did.

    You see, the problem with us liberals is that, we always assumed the bullshit peddlers actually knew better, they just were craven, ambitious, and completely lacking in conscience. We always thought the O'Reilly's and Fox News anchors and right wing pundits were knowingly selling bullshit to an unsuspecting audience for the purpose of political gain.

    But no. In point of fact, the right wing echo chamber has existed so long that what we have now are True Believers. These are people so thoroughly indoctrinated into right wing thought, they actually convinced themselves that the improbable is possible. They were thoroughly brainwashed into a knee-jerk refusal to believe anything the pointy-heads said (obviously LIEberals! Duh!). They've been inoculated against critical thinking. As a result, reality popped their fantasy balloon and today they have the sadz. Also, they look like fools. Any indepdendent who thought they could watch Fox News "to get the other perspective" hopefully now understands that no, you watch Fox News to get a heaping load of lies.

    So here were are a day and a half after the election and the right wing is flopping about like a goldfish tossed from its bowl, blaming everyone and everything for what happened except themselves. It's not fun to watch, in fact, it's a little scary. There seems to be a real lack of self-awareness here. I don't think this bodes well for them.

  • It's not fun to watch, in fact, it's a little scary.

    I disagree. I'm having a great time with all the schadenfreude.

  • @Talisker:
    I suppose there were people who uprooted their lives to go campaign for Kerry in swing states, but I don't recall this sort of cognitive dissonance in that case. Most of the people I talked to were certain weeks out that Kerry was toast. And I always regarded Romney as the Kerry of the GOP.

    Sometimes I wish I were more comfortable with cognitive dissonance. If I were better at believing in things I wished to be true, who knows what I could accomplish? Thing is, the sort of cognitive-dissonace hangover we're seeing this week is so brutally painful to watch.

    @bb:
    I don't know Dick Morris personally, but he strikes me as the emptiest asshole on the planet. If the man had any sort of dignity, he would have vanished from public life in 1996.

  • My concern now is that the right will blame Mittens himself for everything and double down on its insistence that Obama's presidency is somehow "illegitimate."

  • mel in oregon says:

    why would you be surprised that republicans believe what fox news & all the rest of the corporate press tells them what to believe? look at the red states where a great many dumbells live. they don't believe in evolution, global warming or a woman's right to choose. they're complete morons who don't even have enough sense to vote their own self-interest. what about the obama ass kissers (rachel maddow, randy roads, ed (get out those cell phones)? they are completely in the dark too. obama will make the grand bargain. he continues to kill innocent people with the drone program. his whole cabinet is wallstreet. he will go ahead with the keystone pipeline (the southern half is already a done deal). he will compromise his ass off with boehner & the rest of the halfwitted republicans. wake the fuck up!

  • Hey, I just learned something from my co-workers at lunch that directly applies to this thread!

    Apparently the Obama crew knew 2.5 hours before the election was over that they were going to win because of their super-awesome high tech group of smart number crunchers that were totally better than any of the analysts on Romney's side.

    I pointed out that I knew days before that the probability of this turning out exactly the way it did was highly likely – and that anyone else who wanted access to that data had it to.

    *sigh* Some people will literally never learn and will always make shit up.

  • 1douchebag:

    It's one thing for the Unskewed Polls guy to be wrong and admit he didn't know what he was doing. Hell, I pontificate on shit I don't know jack about all the damn time. But it's quite another thing for this guy to be catapulted into instant "expert" and put on Fox News every night and basically given credibility just because he's telling people what they want to hear.

    If they were a legitimate news outfit, not a propaganda mill, Fox News would never have put him on the air.

  • Well,there ya have it–the Republican mantra : "Facts, schmacts! Who needs 'em? I want to BELIEVE…." And it doesn't just apply to elections. Think "Reds under the bed," fluoridated water, Laffer curve, "death panels," "Kenyan socialist," and on and on…

    Yes, the Republican Party is the party which believes in the power of myth…..

  • What's sad, and a little shocking, is that even the Romney campaign didn't see this coming:

    "We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory," said one senior adviser. "I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."

    They just couldn't believe they had been so wrong. And maybe they weren't: There was Karl Rove on Fox saying Ohio wasn't settled, so campaign aides decided to wait. They didn't want to have to withdraw their concession, like Al Gore did in 2000, and they thought maybe the suburbs of Columbus and Cincinnati, which hadn't been reported, could make a difference.

    […]

    Romney was stoic as he talked the president, an aide said, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, the adviser said. Ryan's wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.

  • Paul Ryan would be shocked since he is literally an expert at making shit up, putting it in numerical form, and making a neat graphic out of it. And people think that it must be true since it's in bar chart form, and god damn, he's gotta be a fucking genius for knowing how to use Excel.

  • it will be "conservatism was failed by Rmoney" soon. Conservatism never is the problem, it is always the man/woman who is the Conservative leader.
    just the standard operating procedure.

    this whole "Faith Based BS" has been pushed for so long. it really is amazing to have lived long enough to see it all crashing down. for that i thank the nonexistant Mean Man who finally got fed up with all the pandering. lol

    really astounds me it took this long to alienate all the white women all this time. thank god for their hate filled lies against women, is all i can say. just astounding, so mindless for so long, some 40 years of lies coming from teh Right fed upon and helped by the Democratic wannabees.

    i do wonder what the next step for the scared old white party. there are still enough white people inthe Red States who believe the lies. just now there are as many "Others" in the Blue states who can stop the lying liars if they are "threatened."

    will the Gop figure out how to "fix" their obvious blatant BS machine? i would bet odds they won't ever stop till the last Red neck dies with the Confederate Flag and a gun in his hands.

    yes it is good to see such "facts" come home to roost. All the lies lost so some old white men can lord over others. America is a sad place. there may be hope, but with OBAMA neocon that he is, watch out and watch him selll us out to the Bipartisan GOP to make "nice."

    make nice my ass. they should shoot all these fockers or send them to Somalia. all these lives. the crime of the Century. yes i have a dream and it has nothing to do with any of those white mfs. grow up children should be a requirement before we allow back into the playground.

    these nuts are past tolerable. schadenfreude? maybe we could tell them what they told us for many years. "Hurry up and Die."

    Give peace a chance. not in a Republican lifetime.

  • now if i really was pissed, i might really say what i feel, but im holding back due to the Chivalrous Polite Southern Society i was raised in., lol.

    lube or no lube. that is the question of the day!

  • @jjack:
    "Paul Ryan would be shocked since he is literally an expert at making shit up, putting it in numerical form, and making a neat graphic out of it. And people think that it must be true since it's in bar chart form, and god damn, he's gotta be a fucking genius for knowing how to use Excel."

    If we think about this half of it does make sense. Given how many economists there are floating around.

    One thing that struck me early on when studying Econ. were the "curves". I was always wonder where this "curve" came from . Where was the data generating it. It was always "draw an x,y then put a curve in there".
    Huh?? So I'm drawing it because you say I'm supposed to? Are you sure that this works out the way you say it does?

    So economists are used to having charts and graphs that have no data behind them magically appear.

    So Rove is saying we're the one's suppressing the vote now?

    Given how much money he's taken from some rally rich people one of whom being a casino owner, he probably should be freaking. Don't be surprised I has a "heart attack" in the near future.

  • @Jimcat:

    I may be a foreigner, but I do think that the correct phrase is, "to not know X from Y." Originally, to not know one's asshole from a hole in the ground. It's a 2-place relation. But what is "to not know X from Y from Z"? What's up with that?

  • purpleplatypus says:

    "But what is "to not know X from Y from Z"? What's up with that?"

    To not be able to distinguish between *any* two of those three things. It doesn't seem that tricky or complicated to me.

  • Looking back over this:

    Last para:
    *really* not rally
    *he*. I should be fine from sudden heart attacks as I haven't pissed off those kinds of people.

    An edit function would be nice Ed

  • From cbsnews. Apparently the Romney camp truly believed they would win and were "shell shocked" when it went the other way.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss/

    As a result, they believed the public/media polls were skewed – they thought those polls oversampled Democrats and didn't reflect Republican enthusiasm. They based their own internal polls on turnout levels more favorable to Romney.

    What I find disturbing about this is that even the GOP leaders live inside the echo chamber now.

    If the data doesn't agree with our narrative, forget the data, we'll make up our own numbers that do.

  • The right really do live in their own little fantasy world, and it makes them furious when their bubble is popped and reality intrudes. Look for riots and other childish carrying-on.

  • this election is a direct assault on their "lifestyle and beliefs." to expect theses dream weavers society to quietly accept any version of reality other than theirs is stupidity, naivete and outright asking for total war.
    just read teh reaction to gay marriage. absolute total outrage and planned reactionary actions.

    the Faith in their own lies has created a race of "superiors". their ability to suspend others' reality is what is the danger here. that others have let them get away with this infantile pretending is and has been the downfall of society. remember society is teh functioning of the members within it.

    and the Left is not a member in their version of the Rigth wing creationism

    sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. these Fockers use everything to reassert their fantasy land.

    so who wants to pretend these "lunatics", psychos won't do "whatever it takes" to continue on with their version of "REAL AMERICA."

    Remeber Archie Bunker. that's their world and we are just "meatheads" to them.

    another one of their favorite lines "Praise the Lord and pass the Ammunition."

    so much of their "facts" are so fantastical most of the sane peole won't believe any could go there!

    for 40 years we have been forced to live in their fantasy land where Mr. Roark has made their dreams come true. like they are going to stop now and face the Real World.

    if you believe the Right will accept any other "version" of than theirs, well, i've got some wetland in West Texas for sale. Cheap, real Cheap. lol.

  • Goldwater said, "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" . sounds like Malcom X and his "by any means necessary. funny how extremists all sound the same, but the Blacks, well, when Blacks say it, "you know it's bad. lol

    we truly live in interesting times.

  • I think it's just the classic, the emperor has no clothes on. Fox News listeners should turn the channel en mass after this fiasco. They should realize that this network has no validity at all. But there in lies the problem. That requires independent thinking. No conspiracy theories, no liberal bias, nothing they rely upon when they watch this channel exclusively. But this was very eye opening. I always thought Hannity, O'Reilly, Rove, et al were just playing their audience and laughing all the way to the bank. I guess some really bad things can happen to you when you live on Bullshit Mountain too long.

  • Excellent post…I fully admit that I was one of the very people you're describing, who was paranoid and buying into the meme that it was a "close race" due to too much negative media exposure. I will not make the same mistake again.

    I feel pretty silly now, but Obama won so I'm perfectly at peace with my pre-election gullibility! :)

  • LanceThruster says:

    Reports are in that Mitt is leading in the post election polls and a landslide is predicted.

    Doubleplusgood!

  • Bernard you are giving your age away with references to the 70's TV characters but rightious rants. Yes, the RW ecochamber has some deprogramming to do but I do not give them any hope as they are willfully deluded as you say. I have seen them and live among them myself.

  • yes i am that old, lol. but i never paid attention. i even voted for the Great Communication, St. Ronnie. which i will regret for the rest of my life. sometimes intelligence doesn't come till you Fock up, big time. lol.

    or as my father used to say. Hindsight is 20-20.

    as i also have heard ignorance is bliss and these peole have been living off of my taxes for eons now.
    the Red State people, and i live in a Red state. La., take more money from us Taxpayers than they pay in. Facts which really do have a liberal bias. that's why they invented Faith Based Christian Talibanism to subvert the American Way.

    the Blog Driftglass has a video from "All in the Family", a throw back to the "70's. the truth is there for those who choose to see.

    the danger is those of us who know the truth have to hold the liars feet to the fire of that truth.

    amazes me how for over 40 years now they have been Bullshilling the people. and been very good at it. now the chickens are coming home to the roost.

    the MIC owns us/America now adn the Right wing is the recipient of the "goodies." reading the history of the people like Newt Gingrinch, Bill Clinton, and especially the Reagan takeover is quite enlightening.

    there is so much out there that shows how smart these people are. and as they say, the bigger they are the harder it is to make them fall, lol. repeat a lie often enough and it is no longer a lie. Freud's son-in-law was a leader in the manipulation of the public for Profit.

    now we have a Fascist society where Business owns everything. and people in the Red States have successfully kept us diverted through their "God, Guns and Hate the Other" divide and conquer strategy. Read up about Argentina and that history to get a clue of what road we are taking.

    it ain't pretty. we owe our kids more than that.

  • Winning with class and wasting good meat :-)

    "MANHATTAN BEACH (CBSLA.com) — A dead pig wrapped in a Mitt Romney t-shirt was found dumped at the South Bay Republican Party campaign office Thursday.

    The carcass was found Thursday morning in the 3900 block of Highland Avenue, the Los Angeles Times reported.

    The pig reportedly also had barbed wire wrapped around its head"

    Or maybe he was an R pollster :-)

    //bb

  • how much you want to bet this was done by a Party faithful to cast blame on the crazy left. Odds?

    after all, all liberals are mean hatefilled and take glee in the fall of the "other".

    oh no, you mean there are really bad liberal guys out there?

    and of course,he has to be a Liberal. after all we liberal/left of center people were just waiting for the chance to show how "nuts" we are.

    all liberals, now i can rest my weary head, "both sides do" bs issue has been raised and fulfilled. i can't imagine that there are loony tunes out there from the right, Right? but just because it looks like a "Lefty" did it, "I told you the Left" was batshit, out to get the Right.

    just waiting for the collapse. and thus it begins one batshit crazy loon at a time.

    thanks for Sharing BB

  • If there's a place for pundits in political debate (and I think that in itself is debatable), it's in making a case for their side of an issue or for whoever they think should be elected. As the last week showed, there is no value in pundits making predictions about who will be elected based on data they just pulled out of their asses. Leave that to people who are good at objectively analyzing real data!

  • Two thoughts: We really dodged the bullet when Romney and Co did not get elected. We toss around phrases like "detached from reality" so easily that it's shocking when they are literally true. This time, there was nowhere for them to hide, because the results actually happend to them–as opposed, say, to the people of Iraq.

    Have any conservatives had the thought, "Gee, if Fox et al were wrong about this, what ELSE are they wrong about?" I don't know.

  • we DODGED no bullet at all. Obama is going to do what Rmoney wanted to do, but at a much more Genteel manner. with lube or not. the South's ways of getting over are SO SO good. lol. that damn chivalrous behavior. makes getting screwed seems soo nice.

    when Obama takes Social Security and Medicare OFF the table of the Catfood Commission/the Fiscal Cliff, or whatever the Hostage Takers demand, then and only then are we "Better off."

    Rmoney was just too crass and direct in his manner.

    that's the main reason Rmoney and his "side" lost the election. do you really think Blacks, Women, Latinos , Gays, etc. are welcome to the Owners. Rmoney, and Akin and Murdoch spoke too FACTUALLY about what is going down.

    the Game is the Same, the Scam continues, but under "better PR methods". without someone as "good" as ST. Reagan, the Owners have to use the "Obama" brand to get Social Security/Medicare money the Government is spending.

    After all, the Republicans/Owners "Built it" and they want it all back, NOW. or as that commercial for selling cereal always said: Silly Rabbit, Trix is for kids. You thought you paid for it with taxes? lol. good one. lol.

    Do you really think a little PR/Camouflage, using a Black Man instead of a white Businessman, to steal the Social Security/Medicare MONEY, means we are any "safer" when it comes to the "Government is the Problem" mantra of the last 40 years.

    by any means necessary, which is probably why they hated Malcolm X so much. he "copied" their slogan and said it right out loud. lol.

    Medicare, Food Stamps, Business Tax Deductions, those are entitlements. Social Security is not an "etitlement" program, though that's all you ever heard it called, probably. and we Americans, via TV, are such easily led, well, really Fox viewers are the easiest led. use the fear of the Black man, the Other. lol

    divide and conquer, works so well. coming to a TV station/Newspaper/MSM component near you.

  • Liberal and progressive people (both pro- and anti-President Obama) keep saying he's going to do what the conmen want. Please call your congresspeople and demand that they don't do what the conmen want, that they insist that President Obama does what the people voted him in to do. Sign every frigging petition, write to your local rag's editor, call the blasted White House, harass asshole congresspeople as much as you can. Fight. Don't just resign yourselves to his failure. FIGHT FOR FUCK'S SAKE. Then if he does go for the "grand bargain" shit, you can be content and self-righteous knowing that you did your best to stop him. Fight first, though.

  • mel in oregon says:

    maybe give the bastards a hand if they want to leave the states. costa rica? good, go there libatarians & tea baggers. just don't come crying to uncle when they kidnap a family member for ransom. israel? how could any decent person want to go to a country that treats the palestinians like shit. in other words fuck conservative loud mouthed assholes.

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